- Do I need a licence to run a vacation rental in Florida?
- Yes, from the state. A property rented to guests more than three times a year for periods of less than thirty days, or advertised as available for such stays, is a transient public lodging establishment and needs a vacation rental licence from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
- Can a Florida city ban short-term rentals?
- Generally not through new rules. State law preempts local governments from prohibiting vacation rentals or regulating how often or for how long they may be rented. Ordinances adopted on or before 1 June 2011 are grandfathered, which is why some Florida cities still enforce restrictions their neighbours cannot.
The DBPR licence
Florida licenses vacation rentals through the Division of Hotels and Restaurants at DBPR. The test is in the statute: a unit rented to guests more than three times in a calendar year for periods of less than thirty days or one calendar month, or which is advertised as available for such stays, is a transient public lodging establishment.
Licences come in two shapes — a single licence for one property, and a collective licence covering several units in one condominium or subdivision under one licence holder. Which is right depends on how the units are held, and getting it wrong is a licensing problem rather than a paperwork one.
What preemption does and does not stop
Florida preempts local regulation of vacation rentals in two specific respects: a local government may not prohibit them outright, and may not regulate the duration or frequency of rental. That is narrower than it sounds. Cities remain free to apply noise, parking, occupancy, solid waste and life-safety rules of general application, and to require a local business tax receipt.
The grandfather clause is the part that surprises people. A local ordinance adopted on or before 1 June 2011 survives, which is why a handful of Florida municipalities enforce registration schemes and rental-frequency limits that a neighbouring city could not adopt today.
The three taxes
A Florida stay generally attracts state sales tax, a county discretionary sales surtax where the county levies one, and a tourist development tax set by the county — often called the bed tax. The first two go to the Department of Revenue; the third goes to the Department of Revenue in some counties and directly to the county tax collector in others, which is the detail most often missed by an operator crossing a county line.
Platforms collect and remit some of these in some counties and not in others. Assuming the platform has handled it is the most expensive assumption available in this state, because the liability stays with the operator.
Three taxes at three rates, remitted to two authorities, on bookings from several channels. Direct PMS posts each one against the stay that generated it so the return reconciles to the calendar.
Short-term rental operators →- Rules and rates in this area change often, and this page is a summary rather than advice. Check the official source before you rely on any figure in it.
There is no California short-term rental law to comply with. There are roughly five hundred municipal ones, and the only safe assumption is that the city you are buying in does something different from the city you already operate in.
New York did not ban short-term rentals. It required registration, then required the platforms to check it — which removed most of the market in a single step, because most of the market could never have registered.
San Francisco's regime is the strictest of the residency-based models: you must actually live there, you must register, and the city audits the count of nights you were not home.